The congressman who represents most of us here in Newton County is Hank Johnson, who in reality is elected for us by the voters of DeKalb County, his home base.

Johnson is a liberal who leans far to the left and has supported every project that the president has proposed in his six years in office.

As our representative in Congress, he has, at times, caused us embarrassment by his comments on issues of the day.

We can complain about his voting habits until the cows come home, and the voters in our county are not going to be able to do anything about it because we don’t have the numbers his DeKalb constituents have.

We need to also remember that this is the same crowd that voted Cynthia McKinney into office.

According to reports, Johnson’s latest action is a plan to introduce a bill that will limit local law enforcement officials from picking up military equipment such as mine-resistant vehicles and heavy weapons from the Pentagon’s 1033 program.

We see no reason why Johnson would feel that he would have to do this. We live in an era where a great many people have no respect for the law and a great many more have weapons that are more powerful than our local police.

There are a lot of bills that Johnson could co-sponsor or sponsor to help the citizens of our community. Choosing this one is no more than pandering. Johnson has referenced images in the Ferguson, Missouri, case as spurring on this proposed bill.

The only hope we have is that if, indeed, Johnson proposes such a bill it will never get through the House.

To propose any bill that lessens the strength of our local police departments is nothing less than shameful, and if he does this Congressman Johnson should be ashamed of himself.

We doubt that he will.